Nelson Mandela

Nelson Mandela, the South African leader, is dead at age 95.

May he rest in peace.

I know millions of words will be written about the man, his times, his life, his death and what I say will add little to discussion. Still, I feel compelled to add something.

Mandela rightfully does stand for how one person can affect the course of history for countless millions. Whether you agree with his politics as a young man, or his methods then, or his actions in later life as the president of a reborn South Africa or not, his actions did change a lot of world and that is not to be sneezed at.

Yes, I suppose, you could point out he was a “communist” when being a communist in post-colonial Africa was the cool thing to do. Besides, it got you support you needed to carry on the political fight for the rights of black Africans who were, admittedly, being shortchanged by the white Africans. (Note bene: Both sides were Africans)

Still, he and the African National Congress did wage war against the Afrikaans regime that used apartheid to hold back the majority blacks from the fruits of their labors. Like all wars, it was a violent one.

In the early 1960s, he was caught, prosecuted and imprisoned for his actions. He would stay in prison for 27 years. During that time he became a symbol of the oppression of black Africans in South Africa. As a symbol he became larger than life, but he still was a human.

Probably the most incredible thing about Mandela is somehow during those years of hell in a hellhole, he grew to be the man we saw in the 1990s and early 2000s. A man of grace and considerable integrity.

It was his integrity that struck me as being the most incredible thing about him. He saw his mission as bringing a freedom, a role in their governance for the black Africans and he stuck by that mission despite the personal cost him.

Like people like Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, he grew to understand the power of non-violence and forgiveness, it seemed to me. That does not mean he was not a ruthless leader, just one who saw a different way to achieve his ends.

His handling of the transition from a “whites only” rule to “black majority” rule probably will be his lasting legacy. It is one I respect him for the most. Rather than seek vengeance, he  sought reconciliation. Rather than retribution, he sought justice through the admission that bad things had happened, and that through the recognition and admitting that these things had happened, both sides (hopefully) would find it possible to forgive those who transgressed against them.

By using the power of the market, rather than the state, he helped break down the social and economic barriers that had riven the old South Africa. He proved not to be such a “communist” after all.

South Africa also did something no other nation has done: They renounced nuclear weapons and gave up their capacity to build them AFTER they had developed one. That alone is mindboggling.

Is life better in South Africa today than it was 25 years ago? I don’t know, but I think South Africans – by and large and as a whole, rather than as individuals – think it is. Yes, I suppose there are white Afrikaans who feel that they have lost something, but I would question if it really was theirs to have exclusively. Just like there are those in the US who wish for the old days to return.

South Africa still is a work in progress, much like the United States. Fifty years ago, when I was a young man, the US was going through its own convulsions as it dealt with its own history of apartheid. Separate but equal was in its death throes.

The US, for the most part – at least de jure,  has been able to tear down most of those walls that divided it before (except we have erected new ones in an elusive quest for restitution). We may have a way to tear down the per se  barriers, but there, too, we have come a long, long way in my lifetime. Sometimes I wish we could recognize that fact, but it seems to be in the vested interest of some to deny that it has happened.

South Africa is a new nation now. It is a different nation. It is not a perfect nation, but then no nation is.

South Africa would not be the nation that it is, which is far more united then it was when Mandela became president and that is his doing. Like the United States’ George Washington, who is his own time was as revolutionary as Nelson Mandela, Mandela laid down a marker that will be difficult to emulate, but one it would benefit the world if more leaders tried to emulate.

Yes, Mandela will be remembered more for his mythology than for his reality, but then again, so is George Washington.

Somewhere, there is a saying that says something like “When the myth is more compelling and better for the nation, go with the myth.”

Americans have done that with their founding fathers and, in a sense, South Africa (and the world to some degree) has done the same with the founding father of the new South Africa.

Nelson Mandela

1918- 2013

May he now rest in peace